When the post-Katrina boom began yielding large state surpluses, giddy lawmakers and former Gov. Kathleen Blanco ignored warnings that the fat times could not last.

Instead, they irresponsibly used the money to bloat the state bureaucracy, grant some unnecessary pay raises and expand other recurrent expenses in last year's budget.

The new Legislature this spring was hardly an example of fiscal prudence. Lawmakers toyed with eliminating income taxes before settling for a partial reversal of the Stelly tax plan -- regardless of whether the state could afford it in the long run.

Now signs are mounting that the bill may be coming due -- and officials will need to act responsibly to minimize the pain on Louisianians.

The nation's economic downturn is starting to pierce our state's recovery bubble. Unemployment rose to 5 percent this August. Consumer spending has come to a standstill. Personal income-tax collections are expected to fall 10 percent this year. We're still doing better than much of the nation, but the gap is narrowing.

The rapid fall in oil prices, however, hits us especially hard. Our state is less dependent on oil revenue now -- it made up 45 percent of the budget in 1982; now it's only 17 percent. But that is still a good chunk of public spending.

And the tight credit market is starting to choke economic growth -- including recovery projects -- and making it harder for the state to sell bonds for brick-and-mortar spending.

When you add the growing cost of current state services and the lost revenue from tax cuts that kick in next year, the state could be looking at a $1.3 billion gap for the 2009-10 budget.

Gov. Bobby Jindal seems to be prudently preparing for potential cuts, holding weekly meetings with key advisers to monitor state and national trends and reacting accordingly. The governor will need to accelerate his efforts, which began with this year's budget, to wean the state from the practice of using one-time windfalls -- like the post-Katrina surpluses -- to pay for recurrent expenses.

But lawmakers, who this spring even tried to give themselves a 200 percent pay raise, should realize that they will need to curb their spendthrift ways.

Any substantial budget shortfall would be quite a setback for crucial services such as education and health care. Those are usually the first areas to cut because much of the state's budget, including more than half the $10 billion general fund is tied to specific uses. Indeed, funding for education and health care dropped severely after the 1980s oil bust. It was only last year that the state finally began funding higher education at the full authorized levels -- and it would be a tragedy to cut such investments.

We can only hope Louisianians won't have to suffer for the lack of foresight many lawmakers and state officials showed when the money was pouring in.